Guild Wars 2

I run it with full zeker, but its usually with my friends I normally dungeon with so I know we have each others back.

Tome of Courage is very useful in the last fight to get the bosses shield removed.

You must be a very special snowflake then (just like every other pro in this forum) because EVERY SINGLE zerker i run with (granted a pug 99% of the time) is face planted more often than not.

yeah going to have to agree with blasino. But yeah you use SYG ect no i do cange from medi traits to shouts but full zerker gardian is fine. Pugs gotta remember you will get more bad than good.
full zerker doesn’t mean GS, i use mace focus but sword focus works 3 blinds with that. scepter/torch play smart

On topic.
Taught me that you better run this dungeon with guildies/friends and you can have a smooth run if you use ven/skype for constant communication. I’ve finished the dungeon and, I will never pug it. as somebody said, you will get more bad than good, rage quitters, people that won’t listen, don’t speak english amongst others.

I’ve learned that guardian is a MUST for final fight (or at least, it will make everyone’s life easier), I had to reset my skills to get PoV, went with 0/0/30/30/10 full PVT armor, mace/shield and boon duration runes. Worked like a charm, we had very high DPS (except for me, naturally).

This dungeon teaches you to be aware of your surroundings (Lab fight), be aware of the conditions your teammates get, of their health, the foes attacks (final fight).

Finally, the dungeon let’s you prove once again guardian’s vertality, this class kicks some serious butt!

yeh 99% of people aren’t going to waste time paying gold for runes and tinkering with traits. it’s like would you retune a car every time you went for a drive? no. it’s annoying.

I learned that my character can actually survive the so called “Impossible to dodge” attack by Mai Trin. I could almost go as far to say that I can even ‘tank’ it, seeing I helped rally a downed party member (like 5% HP left) back to to full health while Mai Trin was spamming her close range attack on me and I lived long enough to fully rally my party member and dodge her final attack with about 3k HP left.

I love Guardian

wolfie.7296:

yeh 99% of people aren’t going to waste time paying gold for runes and tinkering with traits. it’s like would you retune a car every time you went for a drive? no. it’s annoying.

Well I have different sets of armor for different situations, happens that my PVT set has boon duration runes. Now I really think some group condition removal as PoV is essential for the final fight, I took 20 bleeding stacks at some point. It’s what helped me and my party, you might aswell have a different experience. As I said I had a dps focused team (1 warrior, 2 eles and 1 thief)

Now if someone has gear/setup/build that is good all around and serves every purpose and situation, please share it =D

There is no such thing. Most competent guardians have at least a knights/PTV set (accessories can vary) with boon duration and soldier runes and ofc the almighty zerker set

Its silly to just have 1 armor set in this game when gearing is so easy and where play styles are defined by the gear stats you wear

We had a very fun experience in AR with the mixed group I took in (one guildmate, 3 pugs, no voice comms). I did my best to explain the fights for the 2 people that weren’t familiar with them, and the first bossfight went without a hitch—until the last phase.

At that point, everyone except my guildmate and me died miserably, leaving us to duo the final golem, which we did with ease. My guildmate is a pure berserker staff elementalist—you think ‘zerker warriors are squishy, try it with cloth armor and 11k health! Even with that squishiness, though, he tends to last longer than many defense-specced players I’ve seen, mostly because of smart play and long range.

Then came the final bossfight. The first combat phase wasn’t so bad, though a couple players got downed unexpectedly thanks to Mai’s shadowstep attack. The first cannon phase was a little shaky—one person died; there’s really not much of a chance to res downed people in that phase, so going down there is nearly a death sentence.

The second combat phase went smoothly enough after we ressed the dead guy. The second cannon phase went fairly smoothly, with the same guy dying again and one other going down.

Third combat phase, smooth enough. The third cannon phase, however… Everyone died except me. A couple people were having trouble seeing the red circles, one didn’t have enough vigor/endurance to dodge when necessary, and one just flat-out caught an unlucky break and got flattened by a horde of fire and lightning balls. I had permanent personal swiftness and permanent vigor up, which made the entire dodging sequence trivial (especially in combination with the GS leap). So, Mai’s at 25%. I’m the only person left alive. I might have been able to DPS the boss down, but instead (for whatever silly reason) I decided to res the rest of the allies. So, I dodged, kited, and alternated between two allies, ressing them as much as possible. Eventually, I got one up. He ran off to res another ally while I began to finish off the other one I’d started to res.

Mai promptly teleported to him, reached into her bag of kittens, said “kitten this guy in particular!” and dropped him again.

So, I left the 90%-ressed ally, sprinted across the entire arena, ressed the downed guardian, drew Mai aggro, sprinted back across, and ressed my other ally, at which point we were able to get everyone up and finish off the boss.

Lessons learned: the final fight is interesting, because it offers multiple ways to complete it safely. Being durable lets you fend off Mai easily. Having decent durability is almost a must. However, it’s not the only thing involved: less-tangible bonuses, like uptime on vigor and swiftness, your character’s general mobility, and CC/condi cleansing, are often the difference between life and death in the kiting phase.

For the AOE cannon phase stay together as a group. When you are spread out the cannons tend to aim spread out. When you are running around together the canons tend to aim towards the group leaving open spaces to run to.

When you are removing the shield off the captain, have the group stay near you and face tank the boss with tome of courage in the electric field the 1st mate launches. The boss will drop to around 3 or so stacks left.

Did it in a pug group with 2 guardians. The last fight was easy with 2 tomes of courage which we could either use to facetank the boss to get rid of the stacks or use during the last cannon fire stage to heal people up if they were hit so there was less risk of people going down (though it would have been simple to res them after if they did die thanks to the tome of courage facetank).

The zerkers that are dying would have died anyway. I don’t run full zerk, but I have something approximating it, and I didn’t have any trouble. I brought stunbreaks and lots of condition cleaning and, you know, didn’t stand there and LET them apply 20 stacks of bleed to me.

Also, for the large cannon barrage phase of the last boss, don’t run at all. Wait for it to target you and just move a few feet out of the ring. Rinse and repeat. It always drops one shot directly on you, the rest are random, and there is almost always a free space very nearby.

Hmm, what Aetherblade has taught me? Various things.

1. Never do it with a PUG. Self-explanatory, probably.
2. Finally, condition remove might be useful in PvE.
3. I’ll probably go back to 30 Honor, PoV is too nice.
4. Full zerker still stomps the other stuff into the ground.

I learned not to use SY! next to my party memebers in the final fight……. That one hurts.

CptAurellian.9537:

Hmm, what Aetherblade has taught me? Various things.

1. Never do it with a PUG. Self-explanatory, probably.
2. Finally, condition remove might be useful in PvE.
3. I’ll probably go back to 30 Honor, PoV is too nice.
4. Full zerker still stomps the other stuff into the ground.

yeah condition removal is ultra valuable

Why are you almost all so arrogant, and think, that every second player has like 10 friends playing the same game as you?
I personally have a lot of friend,s but still NOT 1 is playing Gw2. I aked a lot of them, but they always prefer other games. Not to mention i even bought 3 copy of the game for clsoe friends, so they might start the game, and they quit the game in like 2 weeks? (saying its ultimately boring , do to extremely simple combat, and kittened dungeon run-nuke-die-rez-run-nuke-die-rez….ect.)

I really do HATE ppl that say : play with friends. You have that many? Good for you, now then, that wont mean other can curl up and die because there friends dont play.
“you go xy rune because you dont have megapro slaves, that help you? You suck then you should go xy because they are good”
-_- seriously? thats a real good attitude

Besides the thing that makes me even more angry is Berzerker set -_-
You think the game supposed to be “burst them down and dodge” ? So kittening simple? Not like the combat is not simple enough, but you force your game style to even more simple? I dont want to imagine a Gw2 that can accept gamestyle like that.
A kittening dungeon should be well made and require condition removal and shield and reflect and all the kittennig kitten options a team could need….they are there for THAT. not just kittening decoration+

My english sux? My what? I didnt even learn it…so what then? They forced us to learn german…thats all.

Nekroseth, before you get all kitten about not having any IRL friends that play the game, consider that all they mean by “play with friends” is that you play with people you’re friendly with in game and can cooperate with to beat a dungeon.

Secondly, nothing about running full Berserker means you can’t bring appropriate utilities. You can bring everything you mentioned – Condition removals, reflection, blocks/shields, and all the other options a team needs… in utility slots. It’s not like you gear for Wall of Reflection.

I found the first use for Contemplation of Purity ever. Nothing else I normally use was cutting it. Used in conjunction with Save Yourselves, and it saved our party many times during the last fight. Nothing like clearing all the red, everywhere.

Tomb of Courage? staff4 and some utility skills let u tank boss in field to lose stacks, and 30s~ CDs not 3min.
And Ive like base 300 Heal-power…

Yoke.4671:

Tomb of Courage? staff4 and some utility skills let u tank boss in field to lose stacks, and 30s~ CDs not 3min.
And Ive like base 300 Heal-power…

Since the canon phase is a 1 minute+ (increasing in time per phase), and the boss takes a little while to DPS down, the cooldown on the tome doesn’t matter.

@ Nekroseth.5186

Well said.

Sometimes i wonder why i even bother posting on these forums because as you too noticed, everyone is too stuck up to give any sort of constructive feed back. Unfortunately these forums have turned into ego wars and ego stroking where people are more worried about taking credit for builds (lol at whoever said they came up with 30/30/10) as well as claiming the game is sooooooo easy they clear it while naked and only equipped with a zerker GS.

Back on topic. I still lol at these “i clear AR with full zerker and no cond removal” builds because in 99% of the cases these particular players are being carried by their teammates or by a proper anchor guardian. I have run the place over 15 times so far and have tried builds from full glass cannon to full anchor and i can tell you that unless every single teammate has proper party condition removal and partially geared for survival a full zerker set will be your undoing.

What i like about this dungeon is that it forces people to adapt.
You have 3 warriors in the party? Well better make sure you run soldier runes or PoV. You have 3 other guards in the party? Go ahead and run DPS
You have a balanced setup with support ele? Discuss ahead of time who is gonna focus on what.

Like foofad said, you can still run a support with zerker gear. Zerker gear doesn’t stop anyone from removing conditions, applying CC, or providing boons.

You made a definitive statement that Full zerker is bad. This statement is false.

You just stated “everyone is too stuck up to give any sort of constructive feed back.” I see a lot of constructive feedback here.

Its funny because you actually believe what you are saying.

Im well aware you can run zerker in as 30/30/10 but you will find thakittens not nearly as effective as lets say knights armor with boon duration or soldier runes because you will lack

- Armor
- Secondary effects from runes

Most of the ignorance or bias in this thread comes from the fact that people are used to being carried from other anchors, and hence they can afford to run DPS.

Having 5 people in TS kinda trivializes things.

However in a pug with 3 other warriors and a GC necro you will find that full zerker will not be helping you much and all your points become null
Even had that one teamate that keeps dying every 5 sec to Mai’s shadowstep? Ever had another mate who keeps DCing every fight?
These are 2 common scenariors in you see in pugs and have to make due. True guardians are able to give 150% of their current role in order to carry the party or distract the boss long enough for others to pull off the rez or simply 4 man the boss.
GC guardians like yourself cannot do any of the above because they have to use all their current toolbox just to stay alive.

And no, i am not advertising full PVT armor and accessories because they would be silly. Heck i use full zerker accessories myself. I am however against full zerker armor and weapons because even though you will be rocking 112% crit dmg, your role will only be limited to DPS and that of a GC

foofad.5162:

didn’t stand there and LET them apply 20 stacks of bleed to me.

If you play with SY and melee you’re gonna get the bleed stacks of the other party members cause you’re gonna draw them to you, thou if you were in zerker gear it’s not likely to use SY. I didn’t LET Mai Trin give me 20 stacks, I GOT them intentionally.

Aswell the thread said what has the dungeon taught YOU, it’s childish to think everyone can have the same experience. If you had an efficient run with full zerker good for you, people who runs similar setup might want to lookup in this thread for what you have to say, but not everyone is gonna agree with you and that’s what so cool about this game: Diversity.

For the german guy who says that has no friends, well that sucks. Thou I think what we all meant for friend is the people that appear on the list when you press the Y hotkey, not your lifetime blood-pact friend who grew up with you.

NumenorLord.6539:

foofad.5162:

didn’t stand there and LET them apply 20 stacks of bleed to me.

If you play with SY and melee you’re gonna get the bleed stacks of the other party members cause you’re gonna draw them to you, thou if you were in zerker gear it’s not likely to use SY. I didn’t LET Mai Trin give me 20 stacks, I GOT them intentionally.

Aswell the thread said what has the dungeon taught YOU, it’s childish to think everyone can have the same experience. If you had an efficient run with full zerker good for you, people who runs similar setup might want to lookup in this thread for what you have to say, but not everyone is gonna agree with you and that’s what so cool about this game: Diversity.

For the german guy who says that has no friends, well that sucks. Thou I think what we all meant for friend is the people that appear on the list when you press the Y hotkey, not your lifetime blood-pact friend who grew up with you.

Absolute Resolution → SY works great. So does SY → Contemplation of Purity for even more boon fun.

Did a lot of AR runs yesterday with:
- Guardian (knight+zerker/shouts)
- Necro (zerker/wells)
- Thief (zerker/s+d & p+p)
- Mesmer (zerker/inspiration)
- Engineer (zerker/ft+eg)
- Ranger (zerker/GS+LB)
- Ele (zerker/fire+water)
- Warrior (zerker/GS)

The only class I really did die – often – is ele because I never played staff before. That wasnt fun. Every other class I was usually last woman standing, be it laser room or mai or strikers. No guild-grp, only grps I found on gw2lfg.

Sure, as 0815 guardian with only retreat, wall+shield on utiltybar you will die. Often. And about 99% of all guardians I went in with kept on putting up shield and wall, a lot. They werent able to grasp the concept of using tome of courage to un-stack mai. And they went in a group of strikers without using stability.

Zerker gear just isnt as forgiving for player-mistakes.

My absolute highlight was this one guardian that put up wall and shield all during boss fight between horrik and field. I mean, okay… even if I hadnt read the description of mai’s shield before, I would have stopped using both skills as soon as I realized it isnt working one bit.
Btw, he was someone who kicked another thief from grp because that thief used zerker build.

My conclusion: Zerker gear still > all. Player-skill still very important with a lot of the player community still not grasping basic things. Cleric-geared guardians are just plain useless. Tome of Courage and stability saves the day.

/edit:
Ohhhhh… forgot this cute guardian yelling at warrior for not removing conditions of group. I was laughing so hard about that one ^^

Hunter.4783:

Its funny because you actually believe what you are saying.

Im well aware you can run zerker in as 30/30/10 but you will find thakittens not nearly as effective as lets say knights armor with boon duration or soldier runes because you will lack

- Armor
- Secondary effects from runes

Most of the ignorance or bias in this thread comes from the fact that people are used to being carried from other anchors, and hence they can afford to run DPS.

Having 5 people in TS kinda trivializes things.

However in a pug with 3 other warriors and a GC necro you will find that full zerker will not be helping you much and all your points become null
Even had that one teamate that keeps dying every 5 sec to Mai’s shadowstep? Ever had another mate who keeps DCing every fight?
These are 2 common scenariors in you see in pugs and have to make due. True guardians are able to give 150% of their current role in order to carry the party or distract the boss long enough for others to pull off the rez or simply 4 man the boss.
GC guardians like yourself cannot do any of the above because they have to use all their current toolbox just to stay alive.

And no, i am not advertising full PVT armor and accessories because they would be silly. Heck i use full zerker accessories myself. I am however against full zerker armor and weapons because even though you will be rocking 112% crit dmg, your role will only be limited to DPS and that of a GC

Why couldn’t you run runes of the soldier on zerker gear? I do.

And running all zerker gear doesn’t mean you are a glass canon. Who said run glass canon? At what point did anybody on this forum said it was a good idea to go glass canon?

You are making a lot of assumptions in your posts.

I have almost 2500 armor and 16k hp running full zerker gear. Is this your definition of a glass canon?

@Nekroseth and Hunter, one word:

Guilds.

The dungeons not really hard to solo either. I went in with knights/soldier stats plus 6 superior soldier runes w/ shouts. 0/10/30/30/0. Took forever to get past the trash mobs, but it’s not really hard.

Umm, it’s not zerker is bad. It’s more along the lines of “if you do not have the skills to be using zerkers, do not use it”. Guardians are all about the timing of using our blocks and dodges. If you just mindlessly spam aegis skills/dodges, roll PVT or another class.

Not PVT, please. That’s just incredibly useless, egoistic junk in PvE.

CptAurellian.9537:

Not PVT, please. That’s just incredibly useless, egoistic junk in PvE.

Personally for me, PVT is junk. But I’ve seen some people who cannot actually survive without PVT cause they are just incredibly bad with the timing/dodges.

I love this dungeon and it is easy if you treat it like how you’d play fotm 40+ and above. You stack, to easily kill the mobs. You move together so that if your friend is downed, you can rally or sprint revive or heal. And take advantage of the cleric set – which maximizes heals/zerker trinkets – so you do good damge/or valkyrie. And melandru runes / food – 40 percent condition time really helps here.

It’s simply a learn to play issue not a must use a certain gear to win.

Hunter.4783:

1) Full zerker is bad. Aetherblade Strikers say hi
2) Condition removal = good, especially when getting those 5 stacks of confusion mid WW cast. Time to dust off those soldier runes eh?
3) Shelter = good, no need to elaborate on this

So please, keep these 3 points in mind the next time you run that dungeon so us “nub non zerker” guardians don’t spend 90% of the time rezzing you, kk?

Since when were guardians that didn’t run full zerk the noobs?

Canakun.8031:

Hunter.4783:

1) Full zerker is bad. Aetherblade Strikers say hi
2) Condition removal = good, especially when getting those 5 stacks of confusion mid WW cast. Time to dust off those soldier runes eh?
3) Shelter = good, no need to elaborate on this

So please, keep these 3 points in mind the next time you run that dungeon so us “nub non zerker” guardians don’t spend 90% of the time rezzing you, kk?

Since when were guardians that didn’t run full zerk the noobs?

Since ever. And they still are. Damage > all in this game. One dungeon won’t change that.

This dungeon does not even attempt to change anything about that. The only difference to the old dungeons is the emphasis on condition removal at Mai Trin. But that’s nothing a full zerker can’t do.

I ran it with full berserker, most of the mechanics are avoidable. If people can run fractals in full beserker, what makes you think this can’t be done?

@Chase maybe fact that after this kind of advices from skilled players newbies are following, and trying to run dungeon with nebwies zerkers is Domain of Anquish?

If I understand well – by using term “berserker” he didn’t just mean that items stats have all prefiks “Berserker’s” but also “berserkerish” traits – and by that – packing ALL in damage and nothing or very little in self survival – and that’s a pain to have somebody like that in team – especially if that person is only guardian in party…

and also running in full zerker stats (on gear) needs some skill – and OP meant that random, not so skillful as You guys, guardian should rather avoid berserker’s gear – until he will know how to survive as a berserker.

Also I don’t think anybody here meant that dungeons are undoable on berserkers gear – just that players need skill to achieve that – and if he cannot survive with berserkers stats he should take something that allow him survive more and be more usefull in dungeon…

This content has taught me that I still don’t care about any form of PVE or event-like content, and that I still want more WvW and SPvP map variations.

erm … why would anyone die in that dungeon?
And there are non-zerker guards out there? o_0
Why would i take you in there?

Cures.7451:

erm … why would anyone die in that dungeon?
And there are non-zerker guards out there? o_0
Why would i take you in there?

Typical attitude on the guardian forums as of late.

Or it could be sarcasm, you never know, hard to tell over the internet

Hunter.4783:

1) Full zerker is bad. Aetherblade Strikers say hi
2) Condition removal = good, especially when getting those 5 stacks of confusion mid WW cast. Time to dust off those soldier runes eh?
3) Shelter = good, no need to elaborate on this

So please, keep these 3 points in mind the next time you run that dungeon so us “nub non zerker” guardians don’t spend 90% of the time rezzing you, kk?

People who have run any higher level fractals won’t find this any difficult at all. If you need the training wheels that is non zerker gear feel free to use them, but don’t berate people who get by without them, kthxbye.

Molch.2078:

Since ever. And they still are. Damage > all in this game. One dungeon won’t change that.

No, it really isn’t.

wintermute.4096:

People who have run any higher level fractals won’t find this any difficult at all. If you need the training wheels that is non zerker gear feel free to use them, but don’t berate people who get by without them, kthxbye.

Non-zerker gear is “training wheels?” Wow. I guess I need to learn to play. Not everyone focuses on damage in this game. There are builds where zerker gear doesn’t make sense. And there are builds where it does. Your post is just as berating as the OP.

wintermute.4096:

Hunter.4783:

1) Full zerker is bad. Aetherblade Strikers say hi
2) Condition removal = good, especially when getting those 5 stacks of confusion mid WW cast. Time to dust off those soldier runes eh?
3) Shelter = good, no need to elaborate on this

So please, keep these 3 points in mind the next time you run that dungeon so us “nub non zerker” guardians don’t spend 90% of the time rezzing you, kk?

People who have run any higher level fractals won’t find this any difficult at all. If you need the training wheels that is non zerker gear feel free to use them, but don’t berate people who get by without them, kthxbye.

Oh? That so? Guess the people (myself included) who run the daily 48+ fractals must be complete nubs and in need of training then!

Funny thing is someone even posted a guide where he uses 2 guards for fractals and 1 of them being anchor. But since you never ran 48 fractals nor stepped foot outside of CoF1, you wouldnt know any better.

I learned that I absolutely despise people who do not bring their own condition removal and get 1 shot left and right.

Also I learned that I kind of wish zerker armor was removed from the game so that it would end certain attitudes.

i wish people could play there own class and not blame zerker, vid online of zerker ele soloing AR. There is no vid of someone in PVT soloing kitten. don’t blame or hate on a stats its the player.

Ar for a guard means lots of work. I do more work in the AR last boss than I do in shaman 48 fotm.

does one class really do more work than another or does one just play better.

wintermute.4096:

People who have run any higher level fractals won’t find this any difficult at all. If you need the training wheels that is non zerker gear feel free to use them, but don’t berate people who get by without them, kthxbye.

Lol!!
This made my morning!

You have this the wrong way around, mate. Berseker amour is the ‘training wheels’ in this game. Using the worse defensive stats in the game teaches you how to dodge and stay alive. Every new player should be forced to use berseker until at least lvl 80.

Once you have learned to play, then you are ready for ‘grown up’ armour and a balanced build.

I guess you are not there yet